


Reprise

by vaguelyfamiliar



Series: Alternate [2]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Blowjobs, Communication Issues, M/M, also accompanied by:, have a generous spoonful of Claude's angst please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 15:28:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17511143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguelyfamiliar/pseuds/vaguelyfamiliar
Summary: Maybe he just has to accept that he may never get to Sid like Sid gets to him. Sidney will go down in world history as one of the best to ever play. Meanwhile, Claude’s not even sure he’ll be important enough to make Sid’s history, much less the world’s. Maybe Claude will always lie awake some nights seething about Sid, but Sid will always be able to brush him off like dust from his shoulder.Claude love-loves Sidney Crosby, but he'd rather die than admit it out loud.





	Reprise

**Author's Note:**

> This is a re-telling of/coda to [Alternate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16783264/chapters/39386677) from Claude's POV. It can’t really be read as a standalone, unless you enjoy being really confused. I tried to think of a way to make it work by itself, and couldn’t unless I was just going to rewrite all 28,600 words from Claude’s perspective, and there’s no point in that anyway. So instead, here’s 10k that flits between his perspective on a few key moments and his overall inner monologue. Needless to say, when I started it I thought it was going to be about 4k, but you know how that goes.
> 
> HERE IS A WARNING for the brief, pretty-much-offscreen inclusion of a real-life partner (Claude's now-wife Ryanne). It was a struggle to decide whether it would be more (dis)respectful to remove her from the narrative completely or alter her place in Claude's life. Even though neither is a perfect option, I settled on the second one. If that bothers you, feel free to not read this! Now would be a good time to remind everyone that the following is a work of ABSOLUTE FICTION anyway, and if you’ve stumbled upon this page through an internet search of yourself or someone you know, please hit the back button immediately.
> 
> Lastly, thanks very much to Kassie [yeswayappianway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeswayappianway/) for the beta read on this!

When Sid first finds him in the drugstore, cradling bags of candy as if they’re his children, Claude thinks it’s a taunt from the universe. He’s not sure what he’s done to deserve it; he’s already gone through torture losing the game against the Penguins, and he has big plans to go home and be depressed. Isn’t that enough of a punishment?

Apparently, the universe doesn’t think so. Enter Sid, wearing a dumb scarf and breathing too hard through his nose and wanting the same chocolate _Claude_ wants.

All Claude wants then is to drag Sid down to his level, say _something_ to break his composure, to rile him up and make him a loser like Claude. So he does what he does best—he runs his mouth.

It doesn’t work exactly like he’d thought it would.

Ending up in the bathroom with Sid’s dick in his fist is last on the list of potential eventualities Claude could have foreseen for that interaction, but certainly there were worse options. Afterward, Claude thinks, _I’m so glad that wasn’t that good_. He’d gotten off and whatever, but now he knows for sure: Sidney Crosby can’t turn bathroom handjobs into a groundbreaking sexual experience, can’t make wine from water. Sidney Crosby isn’t a god at everything.

Claude and the rest of Philadelphia never thought Sid was, but it’s still satisfying to find out he was right.

He cancels his plans for depression, pencils in apathy. The whole thing is inconsequential. The Flyers lost a big game, Claude had an orgasm; life goes on.

 

\---

 

Claude could go the rest of his life without hooking up with Sid again, he thinks.

He continues to think so when they’re in Tampa at All-Star weekend and they run into each other out and about. But then he takes a closer look, and Sid is flushed with color under the low lamps of the bar. Then they’re tying cherry stems, and Sid is awkward and flailing at something pretty simple. Claude thinks he’s never seen someone who looks like Sid before, his eyes so deep and soft in the middle and so sharp at the outer corners, his big fucking aerodynamic nose, his elven ears. Claude looks at his eyebrows and thinks about passing his thumb over one. It’s buzzing, fizzing in him.

Suddenly it just seems like the thing to do—something Claude _has_ to do—to maneuver his way into Sid’s bed somehow and take all he can get. Every inch Sid gives him feels like kilometers, like accelerating on the empty highway, like scoring an impossible goal.

The first time, Claude hadn’t cared too much. But by God, the second time, the _second_ time.

 

\---

 

After that, Claude can’t not go back. He’s pushing his luck, he figures, trying to get Sid to fuck him for real, and the whole thing is ridiculous. He can’t quite believe it’s Sid he wants to get his hands all over; it feels like a practical joke from the universe, with how it makes Claude roll his eyes at himself and never want to tell anyone, ever.

But Claude asks, and he gets it. It feels like the first time Claude’s ever been able to go, “Hey, can I just have this one thing?” and yeah, he actually can.

It comes with hang-ups, of course. He really only does get that one, specific thing—Sid’s gone when he wakes. _So that’s how it’s gonna be_ , Claude processes. Fine. That’s all Claude needs. They’ll literally just have sex, and if he kind of-maybe-somewhat-almost feels a little greedier than that? He’ll just keep his mouth shut.

 

\---

 

Keeping his mouth shut gets progressively harder as they spend more time together, and Claude’s never been very good at it anyway. When he wakes up on his couch with Sid’s arm around him, it feels good in a way that ‘just sex’ doesn’t. He tries not to make any sudden movements that’ll make Sid spook like a horse. He’s self-aware enough to know that it wouldn’t take much.

Anyway, there’s no telling how it happened, but all of the sudden Claude has feelings. He would love to deny it to himself, because _liking_ Sid is a cosmic joke, but that’s how the evidence reads. That’s what it means if it bothers him that Sid tries to rush out quickly, if he wants him to stay. Claude feels like he’s consulting a Magic 8 Ball, furiously shaking it over and over in hopes of a different result, but it just keeps spitting out _signs point to yes_.

As soon as it’s no longer deniable, Claude starts brainstorming ways to reverse the damage, because the chances that Sid feels the same way are slim to none. _I’ll sleep with my ex_ , or _I’ll just get on a dating app. I’ll go somewhere tropical when the season ends. I’ll get drunk with the boys._

He only really does one of those things. “Why am I like this?” he whines, pushing his face into Simmer’s shoulder. The bar booth is stiff and uncomfortable, no kind of place for Claude to lean his back.

“Oh, wow,” Jake sighs. “Something has you fucked up, brother.”

TK reappears, back from the dartboard where he’s absolutely slaying Provy, against all odds. “Hey, is G okay?” he wonders aloud at the group. He’s not going to get a response other than Raff guiding him away and making hushing noises into his ear.

“Why do we even bring the kids with us?” Claude complains.

Simmer pats his shoulder hard. “They may be barely legal in this country, but they’re still holding it together a lot better than you.”

So much for the boys.

They were doomed to fail anyway, because nothing could fix this. Claude is already tumbling face-first down a mountainside into love with Sid. That much is obvious as soon as Sid takes him home in Pittsburgh for the first time.

Claude wishes he could keep the entire night in his brain, recorded like film so that when he thinks back on it, he won’t miss anything. But the human mind is flawed in ways that make that wish impossible. The mental pictures he ends up with afterward are fragmented, brief sense memories of Sid: how determined he was to get Claude off again and again, like Claude had done something special to deserve it—his mouth hovering against Claude’s cheek—the indentation between his brows when he pulled back—his chain dropping down and brushing Claude’s chest while Sid was on top of him. They’d been so _close_. Claude had considered it, craning up to try to kiss him then. In the end, he found that he couldn’t yet.

Mostly, he remembers that Sid had been beautiful. Claude must be sick with something.

 

\---

 

(Claude keeps thinking about it, running into Sid in that convenience store that first time.

Now it feels impossible that it wasn’t a sign from the universe. Some higher power must have had a plan for them, because things like that don’t just happen. Claude could have been in any other drugstore, even in any other aisle, but he was in _that_ one, and so was Sid.

Claude can’t help but assign meaning to it retroactively. Himself, feeling empty and trodden on, stuck in a losing cycle. And Sid, looking just as beaten down and exhausted as Claude felt, for some unfathomable reason. Both of them searching for something. They were meant to find each other.)

 

\---

 

The especially dangerous thing about wanting more from Sid is that sometimes, there are small flashes of moments where it seems like Sid might want it too. Claude tries to work it out like a middle-schooler doing an equation: crashing on the couch together + increasing volume of text messages + Sid taking him home in Pittsburgh + intense sex face-to-face in his bed = Sid Might Have Feelings??

But Sid goes cold just as easily, and there’s a foil to each step they take forward.

He’s the king of mixed signals. Sid’s signs point to yes _and_ no. He’ll take Claude home, but he doesn’t seem to care that Claude has to take off at five in the morning on no sleep to sneak back into the hotel. He’ll send Claude a text when something calls him to mind, but he won’t respond to Claude’s response. As time goes on and nothing changes, Claude starts to think maybe Sid’s signs point to yes _but_ no. Yes, I like you, but no, we’re not going to talk about it.

It starts to fester, growing uglier and more bitter with every time the Flyers tank their games against the Penguins. No matter what they do, they can’t buy a win against the team they want to beat most. So coming up against them in the first fucking round of the playoffs is not Claude’s ideal situation, even more so because Sid is so petty and stiff about these things. He likely won’t even speak to Claude for the duration of it.

Losing that Game 1 is among the worst and most humiliating moments of Claude’s life. It’s not just because of the hockey itself. It’s because it feels like the culmination of all of Claude’s bad habits, his distraction with Sid biting him in the ass in the most ironic of ways. He looks around at the boys’ faces in the locker room afterward. TK has his eyes on the floor and he looks ready to angry-cry. Patty is beside him, chin tilted only slightly down, like his head is too heavy but he’ll hold it up defiantly anyway. Coots rips his gloves off and drops them like they weigh a few tons.

Claude has a responsibility to these people that he needs to fulfill. And instead he’s been…what? Fucking around with Sid, who could care less whether Claude stays or goes?

“Remember this feeling, boys,” he says, after media’s over, Hak is already gone, and it’s just them. “We go into Game 2 and we do everything we can to not feel like this again.”

“That’s right,” TK is the first to agree. “Fuck, I can’t wait. They’ll see, they’ll fucking eat it.” He’s still kind of on the verge of tears, but he’s vibrating with aggravation, looking like he’s ready to be someone’s nightmare.

Simmer nods and puts a hand on TK’s shoulder to steady him. “It’s not over, and we’ve done crazier shit before.” They’re a hilarious and heartwarming picture, tiny TK and towering Simmer next to each other, united. Claude feels the corner of his mouth turn up. Simmer finishes, “We stay focused, we play our game next time, and we win together.”

And if Claude’s team will pledge that to him, then he can make the same promise back.

He doesn’t text Sid after the game and he doesn’t try to see him. Turns out, he has a prior commitment.

Claude returns to his hotel room feeling exhausted, but propelled by his own righteous indignation. If Sid even wanted to see him, he could make an ounce of effort for once, text or call or something. If he did, Claude would ignore it anyway, just for the shallow satisfaction. But he doesn’t, just as Claude knew he wouldn’t.

God. Claude rolls onto his back and stares holes through the ceiling.

Maybe he just has to accept that he may never get to Sid like Sid gets to him. Sidney will go down in world history as one of the best to ever play. Meanwhile, Claude’s not even sure he’ll be important enough to make Sid’s history, much less the world’s. Maybe Claude will always lie awake some nights seething about Sid, but Sid will always be able to brush him off like dust from his shoulder.

 

\---

 

Game 2 rises like dawn on the horizon. They win, a 5-1 victory, inevitable as the sun coming all the way up.

The thing about the sun coming up is that it always goes down again. Because then Sid has Claude’s name in his mouth to the press, and that’s the fucking tipping point. The Penguins suffer one loss, _one_ , and Sid’s talking shit about him to the public? Over a hit that _he caused_ when he ran Claude through and into Letang anyway? Utter fucking bullshit. That’s such shit it actually stinks in Claude’s nose, burns there.

Claude says nothing about it to the press, to Sid, to anyone. He doesn’t need forgiveness.

And he doesn’t get any. The Penguins come right back and thrash them again in Game 3 and Game 4 as well. The Flyers scrape a win in the game after that, but everyone and their mother can see where things are going.

Sid will keep winning and winning and winning, whether Claude is with him or against him. Their goals will pretty much always be at odds with each other, and Claude doesn’t have the same kind of superpower for detachment, isn’t in a position to be able to separate like that.

He pulls at Jake’s elbow as they’re the last to take the stairs off the plane back into Philly before Game 6. “It’s Crosby, Jake. A few weeks ago, remember? I was fucked up over Crosby.” Jake stops, looks at him inquisitively. He gives no indication that he knows what the fuck Claude is talking about, but he’ll figure it out eventually. “I’m sorry,” he says to Jake and to himself, because maybe he does need forgiveness for something. “But that’s over now anyway,” he finishes, to speak his way into feeling it’s real.

Claude is fucked up over Sid, and that’s why they’ll lose the series. There are a few thousand other things to point the finger at that probably matter more: Hak’s deteriorating coaching decisions, their bleak goaltending situation, their blue line’s inexplicably troubled play. But for Claude, that’s why.

 

\---

 

After they lose out, Claude begins his summer determined not to think about Sid. He decides to actually take that tropical vacation he thought about during the season, hops a flight to Turks and Caicos and sets up in a private little rented cabana on the beach. He spends most of his time baking himself until he has a visible tan. While he’s out on his last night there, he meets a girl who seems interested in seeing where his new tan lines end. They have a really good time dancing together for what seems like hours, but when she starts making noise about being ready to leave, he just kisses her cheek and lets her go.

Anyone else would say he should’ve taken her home, but Claude knows it wouldn’t have helped anything. So instead, he gets to head back to Ottawa with the memory of a pretty nice night spent hanging out with a stranger, not crippled by any failed attempts to use her for something hopeless.

When he’s back, he throws himself into his summer training with the same vigor as every player that’s had their Cup dreams postponed one more year. He hangs out with his family and gets quality time with his little nephews.

But what he doesn’t do is stop thinking about Sid. It’s not all the time, it’s just random little things: he’s lifting in the gym and he thinks about whether Sid is too, or he passes Tim Horton’s and thinks about those stupid commercials Sid did with Nate, or his nephew draws something unintelligible and he thinks about how Sid would probably earnestly compliment him on it, if he were there. Now that his bitterness and frustration is fading, Claude allows himself to be a little sad that it’s over. Maybe Sid didn’t like Claude the same way, but Claude had liked him. That counts for something.

 _Does it have to be over?_ Claude catches himself thinking one day. They haven’t spoken in weeks, months, but it doesn’t _feel_ over. It feels like there’s still something ahead of them. Claude still ponders what’ll happen whenever they see each other next. He can’t picture them just ignoring each other like they used to, playing a game and that’s it. No. Claude could make them see each other. He could get on a plane at any moment, actually.

He wonders what Sid would do, if Claude showed up to the place he’s from and demanded his attention. He immediately shoves the idea into a mental closet of _Don’t Go There_ , but decides that it’s okay to daydream about it, to imagine what might happen if he did it. Would Sid let him in? Kick him off his property? Act uncomfortable and weird until Claude left of his own accord?

Ha, the joke would be on him. Claude doesn’t know how to leave places he’s not welcome of his own accord. He always ends up planting his feet until he’s removed by force—he’s been thrown out of enough bars to know this about himself.

But as the days pass, it morphs from some insane, fanciful idea into a concrete plan that Claude already subconsciously decided he was going to carry out, the way things go from _if I_  to _when I_ without a person’s full awareness.

So he hits up AMac, who he knows is from the same area as Sid. _ur kinda buddies with crosby, right?_

 _Yeah. Just saw him the other day_ , he texts back. _Why?_

 _you got his address? need to send him something._ Claude hopes AMac won’t ask what, because he has no idea what he could possibly need to send Sid, but the excuse is all he can think of.

AMac doesn’t ask, not really. He sends the address and adds: _If I wake up to headlines that say ‘Sidney Crosby Killed by Anthrax Delivery’ I’m turning you in._

No loyalty. Claude shakes his head.

Once he has Sid’s address, though, there’s no reason not to go. Claude may very well know that it’s probably a rotten idea, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t do it. It would be hilarious to see Sid’s face when he shows up, at least.

 

\---

 

It doesn’t feel remotely hilarious once Claude’s actually there, standing on Sid’s doorstep and poised to ring the bell. His heart is in his throat, which is a nice thought; maybe if he threw it up, he couldn’t be lovesick anymore.

He has half a mind to get right back in the rental and drive to the airport again and go home. He detaches that half of his mind, stuffs it into some hidden abyss, and rings the fucking doorbell. He has business here.

Sid opens the door and stops short. Claude can track his expression changing, sees the moment he processes who’s in front of him. “Claude,” he says, and then clearly can’t get beyond that.

Claude’s gaze floats upwards. Suddenly he can’t bear to look at Sid’s face and see discomfort or rejection there. “Got it in one,” he responds, a knee-jerk reflex.

“How do you know where I live?” The question is dangerous. Claude feels obvious and pathetic in the way that he clearly had to care enough to ask someone, had to care enough to drag his ass all the way out to Sid’s hideaway by the lake.

Claude doesn’t want to answer. “You’d be amazed what’s possible when you’re handy with Google Maps,” he drawls, faking the bravado. It must be undermined by the way he can’t keep eye contact.

Sid lets him get away with it, miraculously. “I don’t wanna know. Uh, come in, I guess?”

So Claude comes in. He takes in the set-up of Sid’s house, the central living room, bright and modest. Pictures of his parents and his teammates on the mantle. The only obviously lavish thing about the home is the huge back deck visible through the windows and French doors. He can picture it now: Sid’s friends shooting the shit out there, family barbecues for Canada Day. Or Sid out there alone, perched on the dock with a fishing rod, treasuring the sound of silence or something. It’s all very _him_.

And then Claude turns around and takes in Sid himself, standing only a few steps in from the door, looking suddenly a lot more wrecked by Claude’s appearance than he looked a moment ago. There’s some naked emotion there on his face, though Claude can’t tell what it is. Regardless, it’s present and it’s real. It’s proof that Sid feels something, anything because of him. Claude knew, he _knew_ he was right to come here.

Before he can even think about it, he backs Sid up against the wall.

“What?” Sid utters, but Claude is already kneeling. He traces a hand up one of Sid’s huge thighs, and just touching him like that is already intoxicating after he’s been without it for this long. Claude looks up at Sid, watches him watch Claude mess with the drawstring of his sweats.

Sid’s not going to ask Claude to touch him, Claude has to ask Sid if he can. Claude has to make the move, Claude has to instigate. He’d been tired of that before, and he still thinks it’s unfair, but he’d rather have this than nothing at all.

 _Over_ , he’d thought. Fuck that, they’re far from it. He and Sid are anything but finished.

Claude rolls Sid’s waistband down under his cock, which is starting to fill out. Sid’s length is average, probably; Claude hasn’t taken a measuring tape to it and isn’t about to. He’d never care, because it’s how thick Sid is that makes all the difference. He’s thick enough to make Claude walk funny after they fuck, and Claude always grins a little with the secret when he’s alone afterward.

Anyway, it’s not going to be easy to suck him off. Claude might be annoyed by that if he were just being generous here, just blowing Sid as a favor or a peace offering. But the way Claude wants to get Sid in his mouth now isn’t generous. It’s selfish, fully. Claude takes Sid by the hips, pushes his face into the area at the base of his dick, and breathes deep. He gets a hand up, scratching through Sid’s hair there, coming up in a fist around his shaft. He follows his hand with his mouth, licking and kissing up the side. When Claude gets to the head and takes him in, Sid lets out a noise so broken and pretty that Claude wants to save it somehow.

And then when he pulls off, Sid knocks his snapback off his head, because Sid’s crazy. “Seriously? What’s that for?”

Sid doesn’t reply. He makes no fucking sense, but maybe neither does Claude, so. Claude just takes him in again.

Sid tastes salty, leaking steadily into his mouth. Claude sucks him down slow, eager, greedy, taking his time to covet it. He’s gluttonous in the way he wants this all the time, self-sacrificing in the way he never let himself have it until now. This is doing it for Claude, like after half a summer of cursing Sid’s name and missing him even more, this was all he needed to set it to rights. Sid’s breathing like he feels it the same way, but maybe Claude’s just seeing what he wants to see. “Feel good?” he checks in.

“Yeah, that’s—oh, _fuck_ ,” Sid groans. His hand is on the back of Claude’s neck now, but he doesn’t use it to push himself further down Claude’s throat. Claude can do that all on his own.

When Claude was twenty-two and realizing for the first time that he might be interested in men, that maybe it wasn’t universal to notice guys’ bodies the way he did, it was nerve-wracking. He felt like he was late to the party, kind of, like every interested guy he came across already had a wealth of sexual experience and Claude was playing catch-up. He ordered a toy, something that was pretty anatomically accurate and average-sized. It came to Danny’s house in an inconspicuous box and Claude practically snatched it out of the delivery guy’s hands, locked himself in his room even though the boys were at Sylvie’s anyway, and he unwrapped it with shaky hands. He sat there on his bed and opened his mouth for it. He felt ridiculous and stupid, practicing for the real thing. He taught himself how to cover his teeth, how to actually suck rather than just move his mouth up and down, how to push down his gag reflex. All so that whenever he got the chance, he wouldn’t embarrass himself. Claude never took kindly to being bad at things.

Now, he still hasn’t sucked that much real dick over the course of his life, honestly. Three or four times, about. It’d been rare to find guys that came with minimal risk. Half the specific intricacies of his technique now are just things he picked up because Sid’s done them to him. But how deep he’s able to take Sid in is the direct result of what must add up to hours spent flattening his tongue against the underside of that dildo. The way he’s able to savor how Sid tastes, the weight of him—it’s because Claude made a concerted effort to be better, blocked out the shame and embarrassment he felt at the time and put in work.

It was worth it. Eight years later, with Sid going boneless against the wall as he comes, Claude feels like he’s been crowned king.

Afterward, Sid doesn’t even touch him back. Instead he asks Claude to get himself off, laid out on the sofa for Sid’s viewing pleasure. It looks more like it’s for Sid’s viewing _torture_ , what with the way he digs his fingers into the couch and leans so far forward he’s practically falling out of his seat. God, Claude wants those hands on him. But Sid wants to see, and it’s only fair. It’s only fair to show Sid the way Claude thinks about him when he’s not there.

It isn’t difficult to tip over the edge with the burn of Sid’s gaze on him, with Sid urging him to come from just across the coffee table. There’s no force in the world that could stop it.

 

\---

 

Sid lets Claude into his bed that night, and Claude makes the mistake of assuming that it means Sid is relaxing his barriers for the moment, casting aside his insistence on keeping Claude at arm’s length and accepting his presence, his closeness. But the next day, he asks why Claude’s there, as if there could be some reason other than _to be with Sid_. It’s just…it has to be obvious, at this point. Doesn’t it?

“You just didn’t say anything,” Sid tells him, which is rich. Sid can’t accuse him of being uncommunicative when Sid never did shit to try to reach out to him after playoffs. If Sid wants to decipher Claude’s motivations, if he wants Claude to say why he’s in Nova Scotia, fine. He will.

“Look, this is…” he tries. _This is all because I like you. You piss me off, you drive me insane, but I like you. Like you worse than like, maybe._

The thing is, he’s always been better with actions than words. So when he can’t finish the sentence, his only option is to show rather than tell.

Claude strides forward, takes Sid’s face in hand, and kisses him.

Somehow, just for that moment, he feels more determined to do this than anything he can remember in his life. If he could see himself, he’d see a reflection of what he must have looked like when he asked for that first shift of Game 6 in 2012, the game that knocked the Penguins out that year. “I want that first shift,” he’d told Laviolette. “I’m going to have a great first shift,” he’d told Talbot. And then the puck dropped, he ran Crosby over so hard he felt superhuman, and not twenty seconds later he had the puck on his stick and his eyes locked over Fleury’s right shoulder. Claude’s never been more sure of a goal than that one.

He looks like that now, he thinks. Except this time it’s to kiss Sid instead of hit him.

Claude remembers 2012, how it felt to have so much of his attention. Before then, Crosby had always been too imperious and stuck-up to ever cast Claude more than a passing glance. Claude got high on finally getting the better of him, on making him look, on making him mad enough that he would resort to cheap shots to Claude’s wrists. They lost the next round, but Claude still felt _hot_ , like he could walk into any bar after that series, rocking his double wrist casts and all, and every girl there would want to get at him. Because he was the truth, he was Philly grit, and the things he could do got Crosby foaming at the mouth.

But that loss to the Flyers just worked as a vaccine for Sid, a mild strain of the virus that he could take in so as to rebuild his immunity to it. They’ve battled and sniped at each other and exchanged a few good hard checks since then, but Sid has never lost his cool around Claude to that same level. That hasn’t changed now that Claude loves him. It hasn’t changed now that Claude’s kissing his desperation into Sid’s mouth.

He wants to rip Sid’s immunity to shreds. Claude has spent nights awake wondering if maybe he’s fucked up and he likes it, revels in the prickle of Sid’s indifference to him. He doesn’t want to feel crazy like that anymore. If nobody else on Earth can do him like Sid does, then Claude has to do him the same back, just needs to show him exactly how much he feels. He needs to know that the sweet satisfaction of Sid returning his kiss is greater than the bitter satisfaction of guessing when Sid’s going to neglect him and being right about it.

And Sid lets him do it. Sid lets Claude kiss him, Sid lets him rush the prep and then ride him slow. Sid lets him collapse over his body and sleep when they’re done, and Sid doesn’t let him go.

 

\---

 

The next day Sid calls Claude his _consistent partner_ , and Claude can’t tell if that’s clinical or endearing. Somehow it’s both, just like Sid himself.

 

\---

 

The windows in Sid’s room have shades, but they’re not that opaque. Claude supposes Sid doesn’t need them to be, when he’s only here on breaks and doesn’t need to control his sleep as closely as during the season. He turns over in Sid’s arms and looks at his face, relaxed and still in sleep, awash with the morning light filtering into the room. For the most part, Sid tends to be peaceful when he sleeps, doesn’t move much or make a lot of noise. When he starts to shift around and roll onto his back, that means he’s waking up. The covers slip down his body a little with the motion, and Claude blinks at the new skin he can see, the hard lines of Sid’s collarbones, his chest. His exposed nipples stiffen up into peaks without the warmth of the bedding, and Claude dips his head to blow a breath over one.

Sid mumbles some gibberish and blinks his eyes open. He stares sleepily right back at Claude. His tongue comes out from between his lips to wet them, and that’s something Claude could never get bored of watching. He reaches down under the covers to cup Sid’s dick. It’s rock hard, which is gratifying even though Claude knows it’s just from sleep and the morning. Still, he could get used to mornings like this.

Besides, Sid’s morning wood may have nothing to do with Claude specifically, but the way he moans and lifts his chin to make room for Claude’s mouth moving up the column of his neck? That has everything to do with Claude. He scrapes his teeth over the patch of skin by Sid’s ear that always gets a noise out of him, thinks about biting down for real and leaving the unique mark of his misshapen teeth as evidence that Claude, specifically, was there.

“Can you,” Sid starts to say, but Claude doesn’t need to be asked to squeeze him tighter, to stroke his thumb over the head of Sid’s cock every time he comes to the top. He’s already catalogued most of the things that will make Sid sigh, “Yeah, that’s it,” on any given day.

That’s why he recognizes Sid’s voice getting reedier. Claude says, “I know you’re about to come. You get the same way every time.” The signs are generally impossible to miss, but he’s fine-tuned to it at this point. He craves the way Sid’s hips will twitch, the way his breath will hitch.

Afterward, Claude settles back into his embrace, and they lie together for a long time. Sid moves his hands over Claude’s skin, absentmindedly pulls at the peeling sunburns on Claude’s chest. Claude swallows against the lump that’s rapidly formed in his throat. There’s no way Sid could know that’s a thing Claude’s mom has always done for his dad. Sid has no idea that Claude spent countless summer vacations as a kid wrinkling his nose at the way his dad would lie out on his stomach so his mom could peel the dead skin from his back and then slather the burns in aloe.

Sid has no aloe. Maybe he’s making sure Claude scars instead of helping him heal. There’s no way to know for sure right now.

“My flight’s this afternoon,” Claude says.

Sid is still for a moment. “Is it?”

“Yeah. I booked round-trip. But I could—” and then he stops, waits. _I could skip it, book something else later. I could stay._ The issue is that Claude already invited himself here in the first place, injected himself into Sid’s life in hopes that Sid wouldn’t protest.

It’s too much to do twice. So Claude says, “Never mind.” They’ve had a good time, bickered minimally, and it’ll probably be best if Claude quits while he’s ahead. Maybe he should let Sid have some time to himself while he seems more inclined to take Claude seriously than he has before. All this is despite the simple fact that Claude really wants to stay longer.

Even so, he’s glad he came at all. It let him shed the sourness that had stuck in his heart during playoffs, the thought that loving Sid and finding victory were mutually exclusive actions.

Sid isn’t the reason Claude’s team isn’t good enough. Claude is the reason Claude’s team isn’t good enough. Or maybe he isn’t, but Claude _is_ the only thing Claude can control. All he can do is play better, lead better, try harder. It doesn’t matter whether Sid’s at his side for that or not. So maybe Claude can be with or without Sid just the same as Sid could take or leave him. But Claude would like to be with Sid, and he’d like the Flyers to succeed too.

Sid agrees to see him _soon-ish_ , and for the first time, Claude allows himself to think that he might be able to have both.

 

\---

 

 _Don’t think he might spontaneously come visit Ottawa_ , Claude warns himself. So he doesn’t think it, and Sid doesn’t come. Claude didn’t ask him to, so the disappointment that compounds in his stomach when weeks go by and Sid doesn’t suggest visiting is dumb.

 _Don’t expect him to stop through Philly on his way to Pittsburgh for training camp_ , he adds later. Neither of them have any time for that in the rush to prepare for the season. So Claude doesn’t invite him, and Sid doesn’t turn up. They exchange a few texts, but nothing about a possible time to see each other.

 _What did Sid think ‘soon-ish’ meant?_ Claude thinks as the preseason gets going, feeling petty and bitter about it. _He should know, he should just know._

It’s easier to get huffy and self-righteous than it is to consider the possibility that Sid just genuinely doesn’t want to come. Working under the assumption that Sid is failing Claude’s tests by mistake is easier than wondering if Sid is very purposefully not sealing the deal because he still doesn’t really care.

But if Sid doesn’t care, that’s…that’s what Claude always feared was the case anyway. There was no reason for him to get re-curious, re-hopeful, re-disappointed, re-resigned. Still, he can’t help but get trapped in the cycle.

Sid hasn’t admitted that he likes Claude. But as it is, he also hasn’t claimed he doesn’t. It’s a precarious line to walk.

 

\---

 

Claude is on his knees in a PPG Paints bathroom when he remembers that if someone doesn’t say they like you, it’s probably because they don’t.

Sid acts shifty and hurried, ushering Claude into a stall and pulling their bodies together. Claude rolls with it at first, because that’s the philosophy he’s decided to adopt with Sid. It can get difficult to predict when he’ll be affectionate versus when he’ll be distant, so Claude just lets him fluctuate and waits for him to come around.

Still, Claude is as prone to insecurity as anyone. Sid’s dick is literally in his hand, but Claude says, “Kind of thought I’d see you before now. At least yesterday, or something.” Now is a terrible, inappropriate time to ask for answers, to seek reassurance and validation, but once it’s out there’s no taking it back.

When Sid says, “I just figured it’d be easiest to squeeze this in now,” Claude is slapped across the face with the reminder that Sid likely won’t ever actually come around. He might stay in this weird limbo forever if he could, keep them half-lovers until he’s ready to dispose of Claude completely.

It’s hard to swallow. Even disregarding all of Sid’s romantic behaviors, just the way Sid looked at Claude when he first showed up in Nova Scotia had been enough. In all his life, Claude had never been looked at that way. But when he tries to recall it now, the memory is like liquid—he can recast it into any shape he wants. Maybe Sid had never looked at him like anything special at all, and Claude was just hoping he did.

That’s not what Claude’s gut tells him, though. Maybe it’s not about Claude to begin with, maybe there’s just something else in Sid’s way. But whatever that is, it’s clear that Claude can’t move it for him.

Sid is going to do what Sid is going to do. Claude can’t make him care. The only thing Claude can control is Claude. And there’s no way in hell that he is going to _keep fucking doing this_ , keep giving to Sid and keep taking whatever Sid unwittingly and accidentally leaves out for him to latch onto in return.

Claude doesn’t remember what he says on his way out, but he leaves.

It’s time to cut his losses and walk away before he has to remember the whole thing as something poisonous and painful. Before the ugliness he feels now blocks out all the good. There was a lot good about it, Claude knows. He’ll never get to have it for real, but. Sid took care of him after they had sex, Sid held him while he slept. Sid cooked for him and talked to him and trusted him and did countless other things he must not have even realized he was doing. Sid could’ve been good for him if he wanted to be.

 

\---

 

(If Claude were still thinking about that first time, he’d remember it now as a punishment from the universe. He’d broken other hearts, he’d taken others for granted, he’d done something that made his karma manifest as Sid, beautiful and aggravating and aloof.

But Claude isn’t thinking about it anymore, and there is no omnipotent universe, no higher power. No one intended for Sid to find Claude in the candy aisle. Claude was just there.)

 

\---

 

The day after Claude makes the decision to move forward, he feels strangely okay about it. He’s still sad, still prone to lonely sighing whenever he thinks for too long, and maybe the dark circles under his eyes are a little more pronounced. But with all of his pointless angst over Sid removed from his priorities, he can concentrate on trying to be good to himself.

He doesn’t sleep with any of his exes, doesn’t run away to a tropical island. The thought of attempting to drown his sorrows in alcohol doesn’t even cross his mind. Instead, he gets up early and gets to Virtua ahead of schedule, does a thorough, extended warm-up and then has a really good skate. He stays late on the ice to indulge in a few trick shots with James, who’s still settling back into Philly, and they laugh about how close it feels to what they were like as naive kids on this same team, certain that flash equaled skill. Then he takes a group of the younger Flyers prospects out to lunch, gets to know them, sees the same insecurities of youth echoed back at him in their wide eyes, and he tries to drop them a few nuggets of whatever wisdom he has. It’s precious little, he knows. But some of these kids will soon get cut and sent back down to the A or to juniors, cursing whatever it is that’s holding them back from reaching their NHL dreams _now_ , and Claude has been learning all over again that readiness and good timing can’t be forced. Maybe he does have something to say to them.

It’s a relatively normal day, but—Claude feels light, good.

He sleeps a little restlessly in his empty bed, but he’s taking the ups with the downs.

The next few days pass in a similar manner. Being productive keeps his mind off the things he doesn’t want to think about. He knocks chores out like he’s reading them off a checklist he doesn’t really keep: do all his laundry, find his brother-in-law a birthday gift, clean out his closet.

It’s that last one that’s the trouble. He’s got three piles going, one of stuff to keep, one to throw away, one to give away. Most of what he’s cleared out just consists of either old shoes that he’s worn through or new shoes that he never actually started wearing. The twelfth shoebox he picks up looks just like the first, so he expects it to have some embarrassing pair of ‘cool’ tennis shoes that the boys convinced him to buy at some point. Then he flips it open, blinks at the contents, and has to put it down on the shelf nearest to him for a second.

Claude swallows. After another moment, he cracks the box open again and looks back in. Nestled among a bunch of scrappy tissue paper and a few old receipts, there’s a medal. _2015 IIHF World Championships_ is inscribed around the golden outer rim.

The night he’d won it, he’d gotten drunk, but he was hardly the drunkest person around. The other guys had been worse off by the time people were scattering from the last bar they were at. When Claude went outside to wait for his cab to Ryanne’s hotel, Schenner was still inside helping Coots throw his guts up in the bar bathroom. Segs came out the door behind Claude and threw an arm around him, bellowing, “So I guess I won’t be seeing you back at the room, champ?” He was too loud for no reason and he had a bright green stain on his shirt from whatever nightmare shot he’d spilled all over himself. It was probably that shitty Czech absinthe. Claude nodded, too drunk to expend any more effort than that, and Segs had mirrored his nod and then cast himself off in the direction of the team hotel just a few streets away.

The bar door opened again, and that time it was Sid stumbling out into the night. Claude craned over his own shoulder to blink at him. There was something surprising about seeing Sid alone at any point on a night when he should’ve been in full Captain Canada form, surrounded by friends and admirers.

Sid blinked back. “Goin’ somewhere?” he slurred.

“Cab,” Claude said nonsensically. Where was his cab? Ryanne was waiting.

Sid stepped toward him then, nearly tripping on a loose cobblestone. “Y’sure you called it?”

Claude huffed. “Yes.”

“Hey,” Sid said, scrubbing at the sweat under his hairline. The bar had been too warm inside for Claude too. “‘M not tryna be annoying. I know you think that. I know you think I’m annoying on purpose. It’s not.”

Claude sighed, rolled his stiff shoulders a bit. By the looks of him, his flushed cheeks and vacant gaze, Sid was the more drunk of the two of them by far. Claude turned to face him fully. “I don’t think that,” was all he could say. He couldn’t accurately explain why after a few weeks in Prague together, Sid had become just another normal dude rather than a villain, an enemy, a pain.

“Good, ‘cause I’m jus’ lookin’ out for you, eh? We did good together.” Sid blinked at him some more as if waiting for a response to that unintelligible declaration. But then his eyes had dropped and caught on Claude’s gold medal. The red ribbon had gotten twisted up a few times at some point. “Oops,” Sid said, reaching gentle hands to Claude’s neck to straighten it out from the top down. It was inefficient, but perhaps the most tender touch Claude had felt all night on a night that had thus far consisted of rowdy shoves and celebratory backslaps.

And then, in a moment so ludicrous Claude would later wonder whether he’d imagined it, Sid had tucked a loose strand of Claude’s hair behind his ear. He didn’t linger too long or say anything about it, just kept his eyes focused on brushing back Claude’s flyaways, and Claude knew without a doubt that Sid wouldn’t remember doing it later. It was fucking weird, the sort of thing no one did if there was any chance at having to remember it later. Claude wanted to laugh, but Sid looked serious, and something had twinged in Claude’s chest at the thought of upsetting him.

When Sid pulled back, he closed his own eyes and tilted his head back and forth slowly. “I think I’m gonna be sick in like fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty, but probably fifteen. Don’t tell anyone.”

“ _Crisse_ ,” Claude grumbled. A car turned the corner and rumbled its way down the cobblestone lane toward them. His cab, finally. He hauled an arm around Sid’s waist and dragged him back toward the bar, held the door open and yelled for the first face he saw. “Hammer! Take Croz!” Hammer came to take Sid’s weight dutifully, and Claude lurched back out the door and into his taxi.

With Sid out of sight, he was pretty much out of mind. Claude stumbled back to Ryanne’s hotel room at two in the morning, and they’d managed to stay awake until he had sobered enough to get it up, the best sex he’s ever had half-inebriated with a headache building. That sounds terrible, but they’d been smiling the whole time. Claude kept his medal on the whole time he was inside her. He’d won something that no one could take away from him, and she’d been at his side throughout it all.

He could have loved Ryanne forever. But then there’d been the pregnancy scare, and she was so young, and their reactions hadn’t matched. There’s probably no harsher way to find out you’re not on the same page, and there’s definitely nothing that hurts more than being willing to work through that anyway and hearing another person say that they’re not. Claude never blamed her for anything, but. It hurts.

Seeing the medal stuffed into a shoebox now—honestly, he’d forgotten where he put it. After he and Ryanne had broken up the medal had become a memory too painful to stare at, and it’s a weird-looking thing anyway, barely gold and transparent in the center. So he’d shoved it somewhere he knew he’d forget too quickly to be able to pull it out again.

He’d done it because the clunky thing used to just remind him of Ryanne, but in light of the mess with Sid, there’s an added dimension to the same old hurt. Now, it’s like getting kicked in the ribs all over again, a physical reminder that love and happiness are short, mutable, temporary.

If Claude closes his eyes, he can still feel the ghost of Sid’s touch on the long hair Claude doesn’t even have anymore. He hadn’t cared about Sid, then. Sid hadn’t cared about him. But if there’d been someone around to see it, to witness the way Sid had taken the time to fix Claude up just right—well, they could have fooled anybody.

 

\---

 

Claude is fine on his own. But he and Sid have always both been better when they were in the same place, whether that was against each other or with each other.

 

\---

 

He’s just finished ordering new curtains for his bedroom when Sid shows up. He shows up on Claude’s phone first, actually. It starts vibrating on the coffee table, lit up with an incoming call from _Sidney Crosby_. Claude bites the inside of his cheek. He’s glad he never changed the contact name to something warmer or more familiar; it’s easier to hit the ‘ignore’ button this way.

But then Sid tries again a moment later, and the fleeting thought that there’s some sort of emergency crosses his mind. Claude doesn’t know how he could help Sid if he were in trouble or unsafe, and it’s likely not an emergency anyway, but…

Claude heaves a breath and answers the phone. “What.”

“Hi!” Sid’s voice comes through the speaker. “Hi.”

Claude waits. There’s nothing else forthcoming. “ _What_ , Sid.” It’s strange enough to be hearing Sid’s voice, and even more strange if Sid is just planning on breathing loudly over the phone at him.

“Are—at home?” Sid asks, the skip in his speech evidently a reception problem. Claude digs his fingernails into his own palm. Is he at home? What kind of question is that?

“Yes, why the fuck—you’re cutting out, but did you just ask if I’m home? Why do you care?” Claude stands up from the couch, paces over to the panorama windows. “You know what, don’t call me.”

He genuinely does pull the phone away from his ear to hang up, but Sid goes, “No, no, listen,” in a tone that gives Claude no choice. “I’m on my way up. Will you—in?”

On his way up to Claude’s apartment? There’s no fucking way. Is Sid cutting out because he’s in an elevator? The same one that leads to Claude’s front door?

“Claude?” Sid says over the phone, and Claude does hang up this time. Sid can’t be turning up at his place right now. For what? Just to say hi? Does he think they’re going to fuck like normal? Is he that forcefully able to pretend nothing ever changes?

Then there’s rapping at the front door, and “Claude?” again, which means that this is really happening. He comes to the door but doesn’t open it yet, checks through the peephole instead. Yeah, there’s Sid on the other side: present, smiling weakly, his figure obstructed by an armful of bags. Real.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Claude blurts.

“I know you probably don’t want to let me in. I get that. But I…brought some things, so at least let me leave them?”

Sid sounds conciliatory, vaguely apologetic. Claude wills himself not to consider that this could be an apology. Sid isn’t good with apologies. He’s good with _sorry you felt that way_ , _sorry if that did happen_ , _sorry it seems like that to you_. But he’s not good with real apologies. He’d sooner say _everyone gets hurt sometimes_ than say _I hurt someone_.

And Claude is hurt. He doesn’t need Sid telling him that he shouldn’t be. He opens the door a couple of inches so Sid will be able to hear him better when he says, “Go away.”

He makes to shut it again, but then Sid’s hand flies through the open crack, and he’s clutching a bouquet of flowers. Claude stops short. “What the hell are those?”

“A nice touch,” Sid says, which doesn’t clear anything up. “Please let me in?”

Claude sighs. He already knows he’ll open the door for Sid, but that’s his own decision to make. He’s not powerless anymore when it comes to this. When he opens the door, it’s because he’s choosing to, not because he has to. Before he does it, he lets Sid know, “I shouldn’t,” even though he will anyway.

“But?” Sid asks, and the hope in his voice is persuasion enough.

“But I guess we can talk,” Claude says as he finally pulls the door the rest of the way open.

So Sid tries to talk, and it is an apology. Sid stumbles through a confusing apology, and he doesn’t really say what it’s for, but at least he puts it out there. Sid says, “I’m sorry,” without qualifying it or watering it down, something Claude had thought him incapable of until this very moment. Maybe that was unfair.

The flowers and the chocolate and all the trappings don’t matter. It’s the intentionality. Sid is here with the express purpose of making things right, of taking Claude on some version of a date in his own house, of showing effort and care. He’s here rising to the occasion like he always, always does.

He’s a little late. But not too late.

“You can stay,” Claude says.

 

\---

 

Claude spends that whole night letting Sid clumsily try to do nice things for him. Maybe it’s okay to feel like he deserves it.

Thinking he deserves it will be a lot less painful if he actually gets it. If Sid actually stays.

 

\---

 

He wakes up alone and his heart spasms in his chest, thumps against the bars of his ribcage with sickening force. “Sid?” he calls, frantic. God, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me and all, but who is the shame on when Claude’s been fooled three, four, five times over? Claude has seen too much of Sid to think that he could never be cruel, but Claude didn’t think he could be cruel like this, on purpose and personal.

He’s just about to call out again when he hears, “In the kitchen!”

Claude lets out all of his breath at once. But he still doesn’t feel okay.

Sid never said he would stay last night. He never promised anything. He never mentioned anything concrete about the future. Sid’s still left himself a thousand loopholes that he can scramble back through if he wants to.

He’d treated Claude well and taken care of him, which goes a long way. But he certainly hadn’t committed to anything. At this point, there’s no in between for Claude anymore. There never was, really, no matter how hard he tried to pretend he was okay with having Sid only on occasion.

Claude throws a shirt and some sweats on and then he pads into the kitchen. He tries to be calm and casual, because he doesn’t want to start shit at a bad time again and Sid probably doesn’t want to deal with it right then anyway. But Sid mentions over his shoulder that he’s going back to Pittsburgh with all the nonchalance of someone who doesn’t think that’s a big deal to take off before they’ve settled anything, and Claude quickly finds that ‘calm and casual’ is a lost cause. “Listen,” he barks. “I can’t waste any energy on wondering if you’re gonna contact me or not, it’s gotten old, so you should just tell me if you’re not going to.”

Sid turns around to face him, slowly. “Where is this coming from? I thought I was clear last night.”

Claude has to laugh. “Clear about _what_ , Sid?” Sid must be high as hell if he thinks he’s _clear_ about much.

“We had a really nice time, didn’t we?” They did, obviously. There’s a very limited pool of things that feel as good as Sid showing up for him, Sid kissing him, Sid wanting him. “Can’t you just let that—”

Hearing Sid say anything honest and vulnerable about his actual emotions might blow all that out of the water. Being sure about _something_ would feel best of all. “No, I can’t just let it be, because you don’t say anything! You don’t tell me your plans and you don’t talk about whether this means anything to you.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t.” It’s a weak attempt to confirm what Claude thought might be true, what he needs Sid to just say.

“Then say you—” _love me_. That’s not quite right, though. Claude wants Sid to say the truth, no matter how it’s going to make Claude feel. Love may very well _be_ the truth, if Sid from last night is to be believed, Sid who wants to spend his off day making Claude happy. Sid who goes the extra mile. But he can’t extrapolate that, he isn’t able to decide what Sid feels. “Say what you fucking feel!”

“I know I should,” Sid says, eyebrows drawn down. “But you’ve never actually asked before, never once admitted that you wanted to hear it—”

“I’m asking now,” Claude cuts him off. _Who cares_ if Claude didn’t prompt it, he shouldn’t have to force Sid to express his feelings. Sid doesn’t need to be programmed into showing emotion, he’s not a robot. He’s a human, and Christ, he must be the most maddening one on the planet.

Sid crosses his arms over his chest and huffs. He’s capable of showing annoyance, at least. “What, you want me to say right now that I love you?”

Yes, Jesus, that’s a feeling, for crying out loud. “If it’s true!” Claude practically yelps. That’s an example of a feeling—

Oh. Sid is blinking at him like in his living room in Nova Scotia, like on a cobblestone street in Prague. Oh.

“Is it true?”

“Yeah.” Sid looks…he looks just as scared and vulnerable as Claude has felt all this time. Claude realizes very abruptly that over the past twenty-four hours, Sid has done all of the things that Claude thought were beyond him. He’s done everything Claude was sick with certainty that he’d never do.

So if Sid says he loves him, then Claude believes him. It’s not hard to believe, once Sid finally says it out loud. That’s all he had to do.

Claude steps into Sid’s arms and Sid welcomes him there. He brings his mouth down over Claude’s again like yesterday, but twice as nervous and shaky, the same desperation that Claude has had for months. After, Claude buries his face in the warm hollow of Sid’s neck. Sid’s given him everything he wanted, so Claude gives him back, “ _Je t’aime_.” He’s a massive hypocrite in how he can’t say it to Sid’s face or in Sid’s language, but. Communication is _hard_ when not everyone does it the same way, and maybe they can both be forgiven for messing it up and missing each other’s cues.

“I want to be with you,” Sid tells him. “Sorry for making you guess.”

Claude can feel the warmth of his own breath fanning over the side of Sid’s throat. “I’ve been trying to ask for it, but I didn’t think…”

“I didn’t think either.” Sid responds, hushed. Claude thumbs at his chain over the top of his collarbone, can just barely feel the vibration of his voice around the words, “But I know now.”

Sid has been far from perfect in starting this whole thing out, but turbulence during takeoff is normal. Claude…wasn’t perfect either. Neither of them are ever going to be. Claude is willing to cope with that, wants to find ways to make this last. If love is short, mutable, and temporary, then they’ll just have to keep changing. Keep becoming different forms of love, reborn again and again.

 

\---

 

(The first time does still cross his mind, once in a while; those awkward, too-dry handjobs in the drugstore bathroom, the weird interaction that led them there.

Claude could have left at any point. He could’ve refused to make much eye contact, could’ve checked out of the conversation. He could’ve so easily brushed it all off, treated Sid’s offer like a joke and maintained the fragile balance of their half-civility. He could’ve chosen not to make any move toward bridging the distance between them. Probably, he should’ve. That’s what would have made more sense in the moment.

But Claude could get the chance to do it over a thousand times, and probably, he’d keep choosing Sid.)

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Terrible quality, but [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb3xMbVOaAM&) is Claude's legendary 2012 playoffs shift in which he hits Sid and scores a goal all within the first minute of the game. You can also find many different versions of it by literally just googling "Claude Giroux the shift" because it really do be like that.
> 
> Section about Claude feeling kinda sexy after that matchup inspired by [this visual](https://youtu.be/rG6bhlqmKD8?t=140) of him brushing his hair back and smirking up a storm while Sid's yelling at him from the other penalty box. Which happened, of course, right after they fought.


End file.
